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So a few years ago one of the waitresses there discovered (how?) that if you put a phone in an empty glass it dramatically improves the reception. The Pasta e Basta restaurant is basically stuck in a concrete basement so reception has always been awful. But since they found out about this trick they at least have had enough reception to make and receive calls.

The waiter gave me glass, I put my iPhone in, reluctantly, and lo and behold: I got 3 bars and no 3G but some GPRS. Not perfect but a huge improvement from the ‘No signal' message I got earlier.

Of course, you probably can't make a call with your phone stuck in a glass, but you could probably manage to send a text message or two, or receive voicemails and jump outside if they're important. This is the first we've heard of this method, and a few people have noted that this does work, but we haven't tested it ourselves. If any of you try it out and get a good result, let us know in the comments!